


In Summer's Mellow Midnight

by foojules



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale), Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Cinderella Elements, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Fairy Tale Logic, Fairy Tale Retellings, Family Member Death (Offscreen), Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-04-03
Packaged: 2018-03-17 00:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3509084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foojules/pseuds/foojules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lady Sybil isn't the sort of girl who'll marry a stranger to escape her wicked stepmother, and her fairy godmother may just be the prince's wingwoman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Midnight + 02:21:32

_Stroke of Midnight Plus Two Days, Twenty-One Hours, and Thirty-Two Minutes_

Sybil ran through the forest. 

This was not the friendly sun-dappled wood of her youth. There were blue-black shadows, and frightening noises, and the moon cast a mysterious silvery light through the trees that was not at all comforting. There was a path, though not much of one, and often she had to crash through underbrush. Thin branches whipped her across the face in the dark; she stumbled over a root and nearly fell, clutching the bundle she held closer to her chest, wondering why she bothered to protect it.

As she ran she fretted. What if the cottage wasn’t where she remembered? What if it was empty?

What if it wasn’t?

But the cottage was there in the clearing, and warm light shone through the cracks between the boards and where the door pulled away from its frame. Something loosened in her chest as soon as she saw it. Everything would be all right, now.

She pounded on the door. It flew open a second later; the cottage was so small, you’d barely have to stand up and you’d be across the room.

“Sybil? What—“

“I’m sorry,” she said to his wide eyes. “I’m so sorry, but I need your help.”

Tom shook his head, ran a hand through his hair, which was already mussed. “How did you know where I live?”

Instead of answering she began to unwrap her bundle. Tom’s eyes dropped to her hands, widening even more when they finished their work. She’d used the only fabric she had to hand. Against rose-colored silk and torn lace, the glass slipper shone like the evening star.

He looked at her. “ _You?_ You’re the one they’re—“

“ _Please_.” He’d recoiled instinctively, but she shoved it forward, into his hands. “You’ve got to help me hide it,” she said. “If they find it at my stepmother’s, I’ll have to marry the prince.”


	2. Midnight - 10:28:14:47

_Stroke of Midnight Minus Ten Years, Twenty-Eight Days, Fourteen Hours, and Forty-Seven Minutes_

Sybil didn't cry when her father kissed her softly on the forehead.

She didn't cry when he gave her a sad smile, the only kind he'd worn since her mother and sisters had died, and told her to be a good girl for her Mama.

She didn't say, She is not my Mama.

She didn't cry when he climbed into the carriage, his shoulders stooped like an old man's, looking straight ahead until the footman eased the door closed.

She didn't cry as the horses clopped away, didn't cry when the carriage disappeared around the bend in the road, didn't cry when Larry sidled up and gave her a pinch and hissed, You won't be such a princess with your precious Papa across the sea.

She didn't cry when Lady Merton—everyone still called her that, even though she and Papa had been married the better part of a year—curled her lip as though Sybil were something she'd scraped off the bottom of her shoe and swept inside without a word.

She didn't cry until she'd gone upstairs: slowly, it wouldn't do to seem like she was anxious to get somewhere, that would just make Larry curious. Past the first floor, where her room was. Past the second floor, past the attics, up to the tower, where she could see half of Yorkshire spread out like a patchwork quilt, green and brown and russet, the gardeners and stable hands and farmers and milkmaids clockwork dolls. She'd always loved the view from up here, but on this day she could hardly see it through the tears.


	3. Midnight - 8:221:07:52

_Stroke of Midnight Minus Eight Years, Two Hundred Twenty-One Days, Seven Hours, and Fifty-Two Minutes_

These days, Sybil felt more at home in the kitchens.

Above stairs she'd become a shadow. She crept along the edges of the carpets and lingered at doors, making sure rooms were empty before going into them. She hated being so timid, but she'd been quick to learn the painful consequences of boldness. It had only taken three days locked in the tower to break her.

She didn't even remember what she'd done—or said—to set her stepmother off that time, but it had been just a few months after they'd got the news about Papa. She'd raged and pounded on the door, then screamed herself hoarse, then sobbed, and finally gone silent. It wasn't as if making noise was doing her any good. The servants couldn't (or wouldn't) do anything. Sybil didn't blame them. They were all on pins and needles; it seemed every week another one was being dismissed for some slight infraction. Mrs. Patmore had managed to have a bit of bread and water smuggled up, but even that was pushing the limits.

Sybil had come to a decision in the tower that she knew even then was not one a ten-year-old child should have to make. She would do whatever it took to keep peace in the house, and she would leave it as soon as she could.

What it took to keep peace was a lot of swallowed pride. That, and keeping out of her stepmother's and stepbrothers' way whenever possible: long walks when the weather was fine, hours spent downstairs when it wasn't. The staff was dreadfully short-handed, and at some point she'd begun helping out. Mrs. Patmore blustered at her mistakes, but it was better than Lady Merton's cold sarcasm and Larry and Tim's jibes.

On a raw November afternoon Sybil was stirring the soup and Mrs. Patmore was complaining about something besides her ineptitude for once. "That ruddy woodcutter was supposed to be here hours ago!" She grumbled. "Third time he's been late this month." She leaned closer to the kitchen maid to mutter out of the side of her mouth, but Sybil heard her: "I think he drinks." Never having met the woodcutter, Sybil was not equipped to form an opinion.

"I don't know how we'll keep that stove going if he don't show up," Mrs Patmore said. "We'll have to send out the young masters to forage for kindling, won't we!" Sybil allowed herself a smile at this.

Boots clomped through the hall and stopped outside the kitchen door, and Mrs. Patmore's head came up. "Well, la di da! Look who decided to grace us with his presence!" Sybil looked sidelong at the newcomer. He wasn't more than seventeen, though he seemed a man to her childish eyes. "Is your father in the yard waiting for his money, or did he have you do all the work and send you to collect again?" Mrs. Patmore went on with cheerful mordancy.

The boy dropped his head, but when he raised it again he had on a cheeky grin. He looked younger when he smiled. "He's poorly today, Mrs. P. But he asked me to send his regards." Sybil could feel him looking at her, his eyes pulling hers up and crinkling in a friendly way when she met them. "Hello."

"Hello," she murmured, and looked away.

"Tom Branson, you leave Lady Sybil be," snapped the cook, but just then the pot on the stove, which Sybil could have sworn had been sedately simmering away three seconds before, boiled over. "Christ at the right hand of the Lord, Miss, what've you done to that soup!" She bustled over and elbowed Sybil out of the way to try and salvage it.

Sybil twisted her hands together, wilting under the amused gaze of the woodcutter's son. But he did not say anything unkind and so she plucked up enough courage to lift her head and smile. "Would you like a cup of tea?" She thought she could manage that.

He grinned. "I'd love one."


	4. Midnight - 2:307:07:07

_Stroke of Midnight Minus Two Years, Three Hundred Seven Days, Seven Hours, and Seven Minutes_

No matter how bad things got, Sybil could keep her chin up as long as there were times like this.

Sitting on the grass in a clearing, the cicadas buzzing, the clouds dreaming in the sky and the tops of the leaves turned to gold by the angled sun. Eating blackberries from the pail. Tom telling funny stories. He tried to toss a berry into his mouth and it bounced off and rolled away across the turf. He tried again, missed again.

Sybil laughed. "Stop, you're wasting them."

He chose another one and drew his hand back as if to toss it at her. "Here, open your mouth."

"No!"

"Oh, come on."

She rolled her eyes, tilted her head back, and opened her lips. The berry flew neatly between them and she burst it with her teeth, the juice tart on her tongue.

She swallowed, and smiled. "Luck."

He grinned back. "Skill." He lay back on a pillow of moss, his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.

Sybil had learnt a lot from Tom about how to relax in spite of a hard life. Two years previous, his father had fallen out of a tree (drunk, Mrs. Patmore would have said, if she hadn't been let go the year before that) and been killed. Tom had had little choice but to take over his route, and he worked from morning till night most days. But he'd confided to Sybil that in a way, his father's death had freed him: he didn't have to look after his dad when the work was done. He'd even started teaching himself to read. When Sybil heard that, she began smuggling candle-ends out of the house for him. A few times she'd lent him books from the library, knowing they wouldn't be missed. It was the least she could do for her best and only human friend.

A light breeze, like the breath of a fairy, stirred Sybil's hair under her kerchief. She sighed. "What a lovely afternoon. I wish it could go on forever."

"It could. We can slip off into the forest. Live on acorns and dewdrops, like wood nymphs. Build a house out of moss."

It was said with a puckish twist of his mouth, but his eyes were softer and somehow keener than usual. She smiled and it felt like putting on a too-tight shoe. "Haven't you already got a house in the forest? Though I wouldn't know, would I, when you won't let me see it."

He put on a plummy accent. "I'd be too ashamed, my lady. My humble cottage would be a dreadful shock for you, after the luxury of a castle."

"Oh, indeed," she said, laughing. "You ought to see me in my luxurious chimney corner in December when it's too cold in the attic to sleep."

The smile dropped off his face. "They make you sleep in the attic?"

She nudged his arm, wanting to bring back their playful mood. "Why so serious? It's not so bad. The mice are quite friendly."

That was the wrong thing to say. Tom went so pale the blue seemed to leach out of his eyes. She kept smiling. "I'm only joking, Tom. And lots of people sleep in attics."

"It's just...they're meant to be your family. The way they've treated you..."

He looked as though he might be about to lay his hand on her shoulder. Sybil scrambled quickly to her feet and bent to pick up her half-full pail. "It's getting late. I'd best get back if I don't want to be locked out." She turned away and started up the path.

He didn't follow right away. Without turning back Sybil called, "You coming?" And a moment later heard his footsteps on the path behind her.

He walked her to the road, lingering until she gave him a wave and started away. She was a few yards off when he called, "Sybil?"

She stopped and her heart did a strange little sideways leap, of dread or anticipation or just wanting to get it over with, whatever he was going to say. She never talked to Tom about how it was at the house, though of course he must know. It would almost be a relief to acknowledge it. "What is it?"

A long pause. "I'll see you Wednesday."

She let out her breath. "Right," she said. "Wednesday. And mind the wood's good and dry."

"Ah, don't insult me." He sounded much more like himself.

She walked on down the road. She thought he might be standing there, watching her, until she went round the bend. But she couldn't be sure because she didn't look back. She didn't want him to see the tears in her eyes.

Family, he'd said. What a laugh. She didn't have one of those any longer.


	5. Midnight - 79:18:20

_Stroke of Midnight Minus Seventy-Nine Days, Eighteen Hours, and Twenty Minutes_

Sybil had long since given up trying to stop the rest of the house falling to rack and ruin (that was a job that not even poor Mr. Carson could have done single-handed) but she was proud that she could at least keep the kitchen spotless.

Of course, "spotless" was a relative term in this case, she reflected as she scattered crumbs along one of the walls. She went to the table and began kneading the day's bread dough, watching from the corner of her eye whilst pointedly keeping her back turned. It didn't take long for an inquisitive little nose to poke out of the hole in the baseboard. A moment later there was a furtive movement along the wall.

It was the fat one. Of course. "Good morning, Gus." The sleek head jerked up, whiskers twingling, but the mouse stayed where it was. "Leave some for the others, now."

The mouse's head jerked again, for all the world like a nod, and it nibbled up a few more crumbs and streaked back to its hole. It amused Sybil no end how they actually seemed to understand. Most animals were much cleverer than people gave them credit for, but these mice seemed especially intelligent. They must be pretty wily, to have eluded Lucifer for so long.

"Oh!" Sybil cried as she shifted her weight and found the cat almost between her feet. Speak of the devil, she thought. He had a way of materializing just where and when he was least wanted. He meowed sourly and glared at the mouse-hole, obviously on watch.

" _No,_ Lucifer." She nudged him with her foot, not bothering to be gentle. If any dumb creature could be said to be bad, her stepmother's cat was. He'd been fully grown when Lady Merton and her sons had come to the house; goodness only knew how old he was now, and still spry as a kitten. And the look he sometimes got in his eye made Sybil think of the old stories about evil witches who could send their consciousness into familiars, to spy unnoticed.

He hissed and swatted at her. "Oh, you don't frighten me. Get out. Shoo." She took hold of the broom and swept him out the door, slamming it behind him. "He's gone now," she called, and a minute later there was a trio of mice at the crumbs.

"So," she said conversationally, and they froze for a split second, then went back to their nibbling. "What have you all got on today?" She glanced over and they were sitting up on their hind legs looking at her, all in a row with their tiny paws clasped before them. She smiled. "I'm going into the village this morning, so you'll want to lie low while I'm gone." She liked feeling as though she had someone to talk to, even if it was just a passel of mice.

-o-

The sky was light in the east but still deep blue in the west when she set out. It would be hours before the family was awake, but Sybil had hours' worth of work to do, and she needed to get to market and back early.

Even so, she did not hurry. It was a pretty walk to the village, especially in springtime with the trees budding and the birds singing their sleepy morning songs. It seemed the whole world was shaking off the cold and darkness of winter, and it lifted her spirits.

A bluebird lit on a branch just in front of her and began trilling his little heart out, seemingly unfazed that Sybil was almost close enough to reach out and touch him. She laughed. "Show-off!" He just puffed out his chest and sang even louder. "Oughtn't you to be building your nest? It's almost time for Mrs. Bluebird to lay her eggs."

He cocked his head, fixing Sybil with one glittering black eye, and fluttered to a branch a couple of yards off the road. He shifted from foot to foot and gave her a keen look. It was almost as if he was waiting for her to follow him.

"You are a cheeky little chap, aren't you?"

He ruffled his feathers in a way that was distinctly impatient and flew back to the tree near Sybil and the road, then again to the one further away, and looked at her expectantly.

This was silly. She was imagining things. It was just a _bird_ , for goodness' sake, and past time for her to be getting on with her day.

She'd got no more than two steps down the road when she heard flapping behind her and actually felt the bluebird's wing brush her cheek as he made a circuit of her head. She turned with a cry of surprise and there he was, back on the same branch, with the same expectant look.

"You really do want me to follow you, don't you?"

He flew one tree further into the wood, turned, and waited.

"I don't suppose you could find an easier way? I can't fly like you, and I'll be in a right state if you make me struggle through the undergrowth."

The bird pivoted back and forth as if scanning the area, then launched himself off the branch and skimmed in for a landing fifty feet down the road. When Sybil got there she found the entrance to a path she'd never particularly noticed before; her feeling of foolishness evaporated, and disquiet took its place. But her curiosity was stronger, and it pulled her into the forest.

The bluebird hopped and fluttered ahead of her, keeping out of reach but well within sight. The path was not well used, overgrown in places, but clear enough that it didn't seem as though it were going to peter out into nothing. After a quarter of an hour's walk the bird abruptly flew up, nearly into Sybil's face, and she instinctively raised her arm to protect herself. He landed on her hand like a tame parakeet.

She froze, hardly daring to breathe for fear of startling him away. After a few seconds he twitched his tail and flew calmly down the path, first circling her head again to make it clear that she should continue to follow him.

So well did the cottage blend with its surroundings that Sybil had almost walked into the clearing before she saw it. The singing was what alerted her: it was a man's voice. Quickly she stepped back behind the wide bole of an oak tree, poised to flee. The birds had gone silent, her own little avian friend nowhere to be seen.

"O tell my love to come to me," the man sang, sounding young and strong and carefree. "To come to me, to come to me in the fo-o-ore-e-st…" He broke off. "Well, hello, Mr. Bluebird! Back again?"

But she'd heard that voice before. It was as familiar to her as her own.

 _Tom_. The relief that washed through her was swiftly followed by curiosity: so this was where he lived. She crept around the tree trunk until she could see the cottage, only a few yards away. Tom was just on its other side next to a stream that ran along the edge of the clearing. As she watched he bent and scooped up a double handful of water, splashing it over his face and hair. "Whoo-ee, that's cold!"

He was naked to the waist in spite of the early morning chill, and Sybil found herself leaning around the tree for a closer look. It wasn't that she'd never seen a bare-chested man before (Larry took a perverse pleasure in just happening to be changing his clothes when she was due to light the fire or empty the chamber pot in his room). She'd just never seen quite so much of Tom.

She could feel the the cool clear air going deep into her lungs, filling them down to the bottom before flowing smoothly out of her body again. Blood thrummed in her temples, life tingling from heart to fingertips and down to her toes. Her cheeks grew warm.

Tom started singing again and she blinked, startled, and then smiled at herself. She really should be going. The sun was up, the market in the village would be in full swing, and any second Tom might look in her direction. But she stayed to watch him shave and clean his teeth, to hear him finish his song and start another and come back to the first again, his pleasant baritone blending with distant birdsong and the swish of the tree branches in the breeze. She stayed until he went into his cottage and she knew that when he emerged he'd be fully dressed and off to work. Without the view, the thought of her embarrassment should he come down this path and catch her spying on him was enough to send her trotting back toward the road.

In the days that followed, she couldn't get the song he'd been singing out of her head. It made her smile every time she caught herself humming it.


	6. Midnight - 09:03:24

_Stroke of Midnight Minus Nine Days, Three Hours, and Twenty-Four Minutes_

Sybil dreaded dinners.

It wasn't only the enforced proximity to her stepmother and stepbrothers, nor even having to wait on them and be subject to their whims and petty cruelties. The most disheartening thing about those evening hours in the dining room, with its draftiness and its threadbare carpets and the dark rectangles on the walls like shadows of the paintings which had once hung there, was watching how Lady Merton was with Larry and Tim.

She'd spend an hour praising her sons, telling them how gentlemanly everyone in the county thought they were, how clever and well bred, even though her second husband had deceived her as to the extent of his wealth and so she had not been able to educate them properly as she would have liked. That, she would sigh, was her one regret. The rueful mention of money was usually the signal that the tide was about to turn. Her next sentence would be something waspish about how she'd given her boys everything they'd ever asked for, and what was her thanks? Sulky silences and hands held out for more.

Except for a handful of shining moments, Sybil's memories of her own family life were unreliable flickering things, growing dimmer with every year that passed. But she was quite sure that her parents had never overindulged their children to the point of rottenness, only to turn around and castigate them for being spoilt. A less kind person might have taken a mean satisfaction in having the barbs usually aimed at her thrown at someone else. But it made Sybil feel sorry for them. Each of the three was a fortress within their own home, always having to keep the defenses up. At least Sybil knew where she stood.

Tonight, Lady Merton was playing her sons against each other. Earlier in the day they'd ridden out as part of a large party. Tim had done well, while Larry, to hear his mother tell it, had embarrassed the family as well as himself. "Miss Brighton was there," Lady Merton snapped, naming a prominent industrialist's daughter who was visiting from America, presumably to pick up a title. "How do you expect to make a decent marriage if you behave like a farmhand? It's entirely your fault we weren't invited to dinner."

Larry's eyebrows undulated like a pair of caterpillars. "Mother, I'm terribly sorry I failed to charm Miss Brighton and save us all from ruin, but quite frankly I couldn't face the prospect of waking up to that face every morning for the rest of my life. I could hardly tell the difference between the young lady and her mount." Sybil sensed rather than saw his gaze flick toward her to gauge her reaction, but she kept her eyes fixed resolutely on the floor until he barked, "What's the matter with you, Sybil? My glass is empty."

She started. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, just pour me more bloody wine."

She could feel his eyes run over her as she leaned to fill his glass, a furtive look his mother wouldn't see. That was another thing she hated about dinner.

"Well," said Lady Merton, with the air of someone about to produce a special treat. "If Miss Brighton was not to your taste, then you'll be pleased to hear that you're soon to have a much wider selection." She turned to include her younger son in the conversation. "I've got us an invitation to the royal ball."

The effect of that statement on Sybil was galvanizing. She was an industrious soul, practical and pragmatic, awake every day before the sun and long after it went down. But she was also a girl not yet twenty, whose life of drudgery had failed to extinguish the spark of magic that glowed in her heart. And she had never once had a night out.

She almost dropped the decanter. "Oh…"

It took her a moment to realize they were all looking at her. The smirks on the faces of her stepbrothers didn't even register, nor did the merciless glint in her stepmother's eye. She had not been jaded by her years in that poison atmosphere; she was still confident (and naive) enough to want things and to believe that, with enough goodness and hard work and a bit of luck, she could have them. And suddenly she knew she wanted this, more than she'd wanted anything since she'd finally admitted to herself that her father was never coming home.

"Might I go to the ball?" She set the decanter on the sideboard and took two steps toward Lady Merton, holding out her hands, ignoring a snigger from Tim. She was ready to kneel at the woman's feet if that was what it took. She swallowed. "Please."

"Why, Sybil," her stepmother said, her voice soft but tinged with irony. "I wouldn't have thought you'd be interested." One elegantly sculpted eyebrow rose. "Well, well, this is a surprise."

The look in her eye, like Lucifer with a sparrow at his mercy, made Sybil have her doubts. She'd forgotten how similar Lady Merton was to her pet: she also liked to play with her prey. Well, it was too late now. She lifted her chin. "I'm part of the family too," she said. "I've as much right to be there as you have."

"So you have...by blood." Lady Merton nodded reflectively.

"Mother!" Larry burst out. "Surely you can't mean to al _low_ her to—"

Lady Merton's hand shot up in a clean slicing motion and he cut off. "Sybil is correct," she said. "She is a member of this family. Of course, there is the little matter of a gown. You can't show up to the palace in those rags." She made a little flicking motion with her hand, her nose wrinkling in distaste as though Sybil were solely responsible for her state of dishevelment.

But that was a molehill. "I'll manage something," Sybil breathed. "I will."

"And of course I have a few things that need to be done around the house before I could even…"

"They will be!"

"Then...I suppose you may go. Under those conditions."

Sybil was so dizzy with delight that she didn't notice the dangerous silkiness in her stepmother's voice. "Oh, thank you! Thank you." She forgot herself and clutched at Lady Merton's hands, only coming down a little when the woman recoiled. "You won't be sorry," she said, and floated out of the dining room.

-o-

It was very late by the time Sybil could finally escape to her room under the eaves. Lady Merton had wasted no time in making good on her threat to give Sybil extra work, telling her that she wanted the library and the drawing room dusted that very night, and the ground-floor carpets taken up and beaten the next morning. "After all," she'd said, "we may be having more visitors soon. We don't want anyone thinking we can't keep our house in order."

Lady Merton's plans for marrying off her sons were of little concern to Sybil on this night. Even though she had to rise in a few hours, she was too excited to sleep. And she had a task of her own.

The corridor in the old servants' quarters stretched the length of the house, lined with small bedrooms that had once housed the numerous staff and now contained only dustcloth-covered furniture and mouse droppings. At one end of the hall was a door that led to the unfinished part of the attic, and it was this door that Sybil opened now.

Her candle guttered in the stale air. No one had been in here for years; it was a wonder Lady Merton hadn't yet ransacked the place for treasure. As far as Sybil knew, there was none here. None, at least, that would be valuable to anyone but her.

She moved into the space, stooping to avoid raw wooden beams, squinting through the dimness that seemed somehow more intense than darkness elsewhere, the air thick with history. Her christening dress was up here somewhere, lovingly packed away by a long-departed nursemaid. The family portrait Papa had commissioned when Sybil was five leant against a packing case, shrouded in a sheet. She didn't uncover it; she'd avoided looking at it since Mama and Mary and Edith had died, even when it still hung in the library. She couldn't bear the thought of those solemn posed faces supplanting the living, laughing ones in her memory.

Her goal was at the far end of the attic: a large steamer trunk with a brass plate set below the lock that read _C. Levinson_. She produced the key from a pocket of her dressing gown and opened the lid, releasing the eye-watering stench of mothballs but, fortunately, no insects. It only took a few minutes to find what she was looking for.

She lifted it out and up so she could look at it: the gown her mother had been wearing when she met Robert, Viscount Downton. Sybil had imagined the scene many times: her father straight-backed and handsome, his gaze drawn irresistibly to the woman whose eyes shone brighter than all the jewels in that glittering ballroom, her dark hair set off with rose-colored silk and snow-white lace.

Now the lace was yellowed, and the gown dreadfully out of fashion. But Sybil had nine days, some talent with a needle, and endless determination. She brought the dress down against her chest and fancied she

felt a warmth in the fabric, caught a whiff of her mother's perfume. Of course the fabric smelt of nothing but mothballs, but she was suddenly sure that Mama, wherever she was, was on her side. And she had hope.


	7. Midnight - 05:36

_Stroke of Midnight Minus Five Hours and Thirty-Six Minutes_

Sybil was no stranger to frustration. The disappointments she'd experienced were varied and legion, ranging in severity from from her stepmother's flat refusal to allow her attendance at school to the lack of a pony at her fourth birthday party. She'd got through those, and she would get through this. That was what she told herself as she climbed the stairs to the attic.

They seemed especially long and steep tonight.

She was bone tired; the kind of exhaustion that elicits hallucinatory sounds in the ears and half-seen movements in the tail of one's eye that resolve into perfectly familiar, stationary objects when looked at straight on. Her stepmother had worked her to a shred of herself in the last nine days, all the time with a triumphant gleam in her eye that said that this was Sybil's punishment, for getting above herself.

For _asking._

There was no question of her going to the ball. She'd laundered and aired her mother's gown the morning after taking it out, but hadn't even had a chance to look at it since then. It hung in the wardrobe, three decades out of fashion and still faintly redolent of mothballs. The thought of putting it back in its trunk pained her. She wouldn't do it tonight; time enough tomorrow. She was almost looking forward to things going back to normal. There was always the chance that Larry and Tim would find a pair of likely young ladies at the ball, and put Lady Merton in good humor.

She reached the top of the stair and went down the corridor to the door of her room, ready to collapse onto the bed in her clothes. As soon as she saw what waited for her inside, though, she forgot her weariness.

It was the dress. She knew it by the color and the pattern of the lace at the neckline, but apart from that it was almost unrecognizable. Someone—who, Sybil could not even hazard a guess—had transformed it. The waistline had been dropped, the skirts flounced, the sleeves shortened into puffs that glittered with beading. And all of it exquisitely done, she saw when she stepped up for a closer look: the tiniest of stitches, invisible as if done by fairies.

"I don't believe it!" Her voice sounded harsh in the empty room. Its volume and clarity, the rough feel of it in her throat, chased away any notion that she was dreaming. She blinked but the gown remained, hanging innocently on the wardrobe door. A sinuous movement below its skirts caught her eye, next to the freshly shined buckle of a pair of evening slippers she recognized as her stepmother's castoffs: the first shot of reality into what she was still half convinced was an illusion. The thing that moved was furtive, and _small._

But fat.

"Gus?"

The mouse froze in its flight to the wall, where Sybil saw its confederates assembled. She'd given them all names, but could only tell a few of them apart. Jaq, who always seemed to be the one she caught taking risks, had a notch taken out of his ear and a loping stride that spoke of an old injury. Mary she'd called after her sister, with no insult meant; the mouse in question was a pretty thing, fastidious when it ate, with such an imperious manner about it that nothing else fit. There were a couple of others as well, and Sybil eyed them curiously.

"Did you see who did this?"

She would have felt utterly mad asking if they'd had anything to do with it.

No answer was forthcoming, and the sound of horses' hooves coming up the drive far below shook her out of her daze. The coach her stepmother had hired was here. Wherever the gown had come from, now was not the time to wonder over it.

Ten minutes later she burst out the front doors just as the family was about to climb into the carriage. "Wait!" She cried, breathless. "Wait, please!" They turned as one, eyebrows and mouths stretching into dark punctuation marks of shock. Well, Sybil thought drily, her benefactor sure wasn't any of _them_.

Tim and Larry didn't look as though they'd be equal to speaking for quite a while, but Lady Merton recovered her composure quickly, her face settling back into its accustomed haughty lines. "Well, well. You've amazed us all. How ever did you manage it?"

"You said I could go to the ball if I did everything you wanted and found something to wear," Sybil challenged. "Well, I have."

Lady Merton inclined her head. "Indeed. And I must say you clean up well."

That was the first compliment she'd ever paid her stepdaughter, and it should have put Sybil on her guard, but she was too excited. She smiled and turned, letting her skirts twirl. The three of them looked her up and down again, this time more closely, and Lady Merton pressed her lips together when she got to the bottom.

"Are those...are those _my_ evening slippers?"

She'd had to stuff the toes with newspaper to get them to fit. She took a step back, her heart starting to pound. "You'd thrown them away."

"I'd set them aside," Lady Merton said. "For some deserving girl, not a filthy little skivvy." The words hit Sybil like a slap. "And that brooch…" Her eyes dropped from Sybil's face to the front of her neckline, where a setting of paste stones made a focal point. "I wondered where that went."

"You did not!" cried Sybil hotly, though she had no idea where the brooch had come from. But her stepmother strode forward, her hand snaking out to tear it off. Along with it came a good part of the lace edging at the top of Sybil's bodice. "Stop!"

But Lady Merton's eyes glittered with cruel triumph, and she wasn't anywhere near finished. "Why, that beading...such lovely work, dear, but you've stolen the beads from one of my dresses. I really can't let that stand." The claw came out again, this time to rip one sleeve from its shoulder. "And your hairpiece, too." The quickly assembled twist of curls tumbled around Sybil's shoulders. " _And_ those ribbons…" A vicious jerk, and a seam gaped at her waistline.

Sybil's vision blurred with tears. "No!" she choked. She looked around wildly; for help, for sympathy, for some hint of kindness. All she found were Larry's eyes, fixed on her with an intensity that made her shrink inside. Instinctively she raised a hand to bring together her torn _decolletage_. "No," she whispered.

" _Now_ I think we're ready to go," said Lady Merton. "No need to wait up, Sybil." And she swept into the coach. Tim followed, then Larry, after another burning, unsettling glance. The carriage rolled out of sight.

Sybil collapsed onto the gravel, sobbing, heedless of her gown. It didn't matter now.

Her heart was bitter. Before it had just barely been all right: what was another disappointment in a string of them? But she'd had her night, her _future_ , within her grasp, only to have it seized from her hands and shattered on the floor in front of her. What had it all been for? Working herself to death, always holding her tongue, the curtsying and the _Yes Ma'ams_ and not complaining when Larry's hand brushed her backside with just a bit too much pressure for it to be accidental. What _good_ had her suffering done?

Her sobs tailed off into hiccups, and gradually she stopped crying altogether. She rose with difficulty, unused to having such voluminous skirts, but she was determined now that she had a course.

She could get as far as York before morning. Then London, and who knew where from there? Who cared? Even walking the streets would be better than this, and she did not mean for things to get that desperate. There was no ready money on the place, but Sybil knew where her mother's jewels—the ones that remained—were kept. Theft was not something she'd ever thought she would stoop to, and it still wasn't. It wasn't stealing if it had been yours to begin with.

She was three steps from the door when she noticed the light.

It reflected off the brass knocker; it lit the blank stone faces of the gryphons flanking the door with a gentle but intense glow, like thousands of fireflies. It stopped Sybil in her tracks, with a feeling in the pit of her stomach that was less anticipation than _Dear Lord, what_ now _?_ She spun around, slowly.

A woman stood in the drive. "Woman" was nominally the correct word, since it was a human figure and wore a long dress, the skirt of which rippled a little in the breeze. But the features were impossible to make out in the dazzling firefly glow, which seemed to emanate from her. Upon closer examination Sybil saw that she did not stand: she _hovered_ a few inches above the ground.

Sybil's heart sped up. This was another thing that was not possible, and yet it was happening. In a kind of paralysis, she waited.

A wry voice issued from the middle of the light. "Blimey, girl. You've had a rough time of it and no mistake."


	8. Midnight + 01:28

_Stroke of Midnight Plus One Hour and Twenty-Eight Minutes_

Sybil went at a leisurely pace, thinking it wise to conserve her energy. The Greys would be at the palace for hours yet, so there was no need to hurry.

Apart from being barefoot, it was not an unpleasant walk: the air was mild, her way softly lit by a full moon. The journey gave her time to speculate on why the glass slippers had not reverted to normal along with everything else. Maybe it had been the losing of one of them, the splitting of the magic allowing the objects to retain it. Sybil was only guessing; she had no idea how these things worked. She hadn't been in a frame of mind to ask questions while the spells were being woven, and by the time it had occurred to her to wonder about the details she was alone, rocking back and forth in the gilded coach speeding her to her fate. Would it still have dumped her in the road miles from home if she'd followed her fairy godmother's instructions to the letter?

Her _fairy godmother_. The words still sounded a bit absurd when put together. She'd have thought she was seeing things, but she knew she couldn't have made this up on her own. The person who'd appeared in front of the house bore no resemblance to any fairy she'd ever heard of, or any godmother for that matter (the title was obviously self-assigned; Aunt Rosamund, Sybil's actual godmother, had died during the same fever outbreak that had carried off her mother and sisters). In none of Nanny's stories had there been a fairy who wore a rusty-black work dress, or whose face always looked as though she'd just sucked on a lemon. And that hair! It must have taken magic to produce ringlets that almost seemed to have a life of their own, and of such uniform size and shape.

The fairy's disposition matched her appearance: dour and no-nonsense. "You'll want to be getting on," she'd said, an irritable note in her voice as though Sybil was dallying on an errand. "You haven't got much time, you know." With that she'd rolled her eyes, waved her wand, and turned Sybil into something that wouldn't have looked out of place on top of a wedding cake; then she'd issued her one ironclad rule. "Midnight!" was the word that rang in Sybil's ears as the coach, with its mice-turned-horses and dog-turned-driver, pulled away. It didn't even cross her mind to ask why the fairy was doing all this, what cosmic lottery had thrown them together. But now, on the road home, she reflected that her godmother's behavior had been rather like that of someone who'd lost a bet. The thought made her laugh in spite of her aching feet.

She carried the remaining slipper in her hand, occasionally running her thumb over its smooth surface. It remained cool to the touch no matter how long she held it. Such a fragile cradle of glass, yet these slippers had supported her weight for hours, carried her in graceful ellipses over the ballroom floor and all around the palace grounds and finally, in a much straighter line, down the sweep of the stone stairs that led back to the real world. She wished she could have gone back for the one she'd lost. It seemed wrong to leave it there, like bait, but she'd been desperate. It had been the eighth stroke of the clock and she could feel the illusion slipping away, her skirts deflating, curls tumbling free as hairpins winked out of existence one by one. She'd glanced down and the seam at her waist had opened as she watched, making her gasp in panic and put on an extra burst of speed. The guardsmen practically at her heels. What would they have done if they'd caught her? The mysterious princess that had riveted everyone's attention all night unmasked as a charlatan: no more than a servant in borrowed, ruined finery. She didn't like to think of it. The dropped slipper had given them an excuse to stop running. _We lost her, Your Majesty, but look! We have her shoe._

This would all blow over when the next minor society scandal reared its head (as they did constantly, if the Greys' dinner gossip was any indication). Sybil felt only a slight stab of melancholy at the thought of this night sinking beneath the waves of memory. She'd had a lovely time, a magical time, and she would never forget it. But it would be madness to think that anything that had happened tonight would carry over into the future. The prince hadn't even bothered to ask her name. If he had, she would have told it to him.

She'd been a little taken aback at the way he'd fixated upon her. As soon as she'd come in it was like she was the only other person in the room. But then, she had made rather a grand entrance. Still, as the night went on she began to wonder how much of it was her and how much was the magic. Was she the one who'd been put under a spell, or was it everyone else? She'd danced right past the Greys several times and they hadn't even recognized her.

She stepped on a sharp stone. The pain made her gasp but faded quickly, though the road was feeling longer and longer. The buzzing euphoria that had buoyed her all night had all but dissipated: if there had been magic working in her brain, it was gone now. Earlier she'd almost fancied herself in love with the prince, but already the picture of his face in her mind was blurring into a generic impression of handsomeness: dark hair, strong jaw, confident smile, a prince ripped from the pages of the storybooks. But were his eyes brown or blue? She only remembered they'd been wide and soft with a puppyish adoration that had made her uncomfortable. She'd wondered if he might be a bit simple; it wouldn't be the first time something like that had been covered up. And they hadn't actually _talked_ very much. He'd been fascinated with Sybil's beauty, her grace, the dazzling shell her godmother had created, but she hadn't felt like he was seeing _her_.

She heard hoofbeats behind her and was halfway into the ditch before she realized it was only a single horse, and not a guardsman's charger. The creak of wagon wheels followed close behind. A ride wouldn't come amiss. She stepped a little out into the road and held out her hand, though not before concealing the slipper in the folds of her skirt, and the cart came to a stop. The cloaked figure in the driver's seat leaned forward, its veiled head moving as it looked Sybil up and down, reminding her of her bedraggled state.

"Good heavens, child." It was a woman's voice, which was rather a relief. "Whatever's happened to you?"

"I was at a dance," Sybil said. "My ride left without me."

The woman considered this a moment. "Well, then," she said, "I suppose you'd better get in."

She was a midwife, it turned out, who'd just delivered a baby. A healthy girl. "Poor thing," she clucked, and then subsided into silence. Sybil was happy enough not to talk other than giving directions to the village, from which she would walk on to the house. It wouldn't do to raise suspicions. The gentle to and fro of the cart, the creak of leather harness and wood against metal, lulled her into half-sleep.

She wondered what Tom would make of all this when she told him about it.


	9. Midnight + 02:07:06

_Stroke of Midnight Plus Two Days, Seven Hours, and Six Minutes_

Sybil's heart sped up until it thrummed like a rabbit's. What she was seeing couldn't possibly be real. The ball was over, that night was _over_.

But the royal proclamation remained stuck to the post in the middle of the village square, its edges riffling jauntily in the wind, the embossed crest gleaming gold in the clear morning sunlight.

Black blossoms, edged in glowing yellow, bloomed before her eyes. She managed to avoid fainting only by stumbling as casually as she could to a nearby wall and leaning against it.

For God's sake, the prince hadn't even asked her _name_.

As she'd walked to market she'd rehearsed the story in her mind for Tom, who was due the next day with the week's firewood. She'd decided on a light tone, slightly irreverent; she knew the idea of her having snuck into a royal ball would amuse him, even though that wasn't exactly how it had happened. He'd probably have some ideas on the origins and motivations of her so-called fairy godmother, and about how it was possible for twenty yards of silk to be created out of less than half that. Talking with him, she thought, would help to smooth down the last few threads of disquiet in her mind.

And there was always the chance he'd be jealous.

That thought had surprised her, but once it had surfaced she couldn't dismiss it. The more she probed its edges, getting the measure of it, the more she realized how disappointed she would be if she told him about dancing all night with the prince and got no more reaction than a clap on the back for having put one over on everyone.

But that had all been forgotten as soon as she arrived in the village, because there it was, in thick black calligraphy: _BY ORDER OF THE KING_. Standing next to the post was a jittery-looking functionary covered in gold braid, presumably there to guard the parchment from harm as well as read it out to the local illiterates. But Sybil was quite capable of reading it for herself.

_BY ORDER OF THE KING_

_Every Woman in the Kingdom_

_Aged between fifteen and thirty years_

_Is hereby commanded to try upon her Foot_

_A certain glass Slipper._

_For this purpose every household in the land_

_Shall upon demand open its doors to the Agent of the Crown._

_The Lady who is judged to fit the Slipper_

_Be she of high or low Degree_

_Shall be united in marriage with the Crown Prince of the Kingdom._

-o-

All the way from the village she was sure there'd be guardsmen waiting for her at the house, being served tea in the drawing room, carrying that stupid, _stupid_ slipper on a velvet cushion. But when she got back the Abbey was as silent as ever, the family still an hour away from ringing for their breakfast. She couldn't bring herself to be relieved. It was a temporary reprieve at best: the talk in the village had been that the king's people were going house to house, trying the slipper on everyone from scullery maids to the duke's daughter. Behind people's hands it was whispered that the girls who'd _almost_ fit into it had been taken away, and no one had heard from them since.

Sybil spent the rest of the day tormented by regrets. Was this her fault? Had she led him on, made it seem as though she felt more than she did? How could someone fall so deeply in love in a single night? In hindsight the distance between her and her pursuers that night increased from yards to leagues, and she bemoaned not going back for the slipper she'd dropped. Now there was evidence. Evidence! That was the other complication. If it hadn't been for that second shoe squirrelled away in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe, she might have walked straight out the back door and taken her chances. London, maybe a ship, going as far away as possible. But it wouldn't be safe to carry the slipper all that way, and if they found it among her things they'd never give up looking for her. The kingdom was small but rich, and the king had a long arm. And everyone knew how he doted on his only son.

She had to get rid of it. If she didn't she'd never escape the prince: she knew that now, as surely as she knew she'd been lying to herself about that glazed look in his eyes the night of the ball. Enchantment or not, he was besotted. Sybil found herself cursing her fairy godmother. Inwardly, of course: she wasn't suicidal.

It didn't take her long to hit upon the idea of concealing the slipper in the forest. Once she'd calmed down a bit she realized it'd be silly to run off straight away and raise the alarm. Better to wait for cover of darkness, even though she'd spend the day jumping at everything that sounded like a knock on the door. It only took a little while longer to realize she'd be foolish to do this alone. She'd tramped the woodland paths in the daylight, harvesting herbs and berries and snatching a few hours for herself, but the forest at night was a dangerous place. And for all she knew, the place she chose might be overrun by the king's hunting dogs tomorrow. She needed help. She needed someone who knew the woods like the back of his hand.

-o-

It was the worst possible timing.

She'd left Larry and Tim in the dining room with their brandy, tipsily speculating about who the prince's mystery lover could be, and her stepmother alone in the drawing room doing whatever it was she did before going to bed. Her heart grew lighter with each stair. She'd already got the jewels to sell; neither she nor they would be missed until late morning tomorrow. She'd pack her few other belongings and wait for the family to go to bed; then she'd slip down the back stairs, out of the house, and into the forest.

Usually she bolted the door before going to sleep, but tonight she wasn't going to sleep. She'd fully expected her stepbrothers to remain downstairs where they belonged, growing steadily drunker until they stumbled up to their rooms to pass out half undressed, and so she hadn't bothered to take the simplest of precautions. She'd just opened the drawer in her wardrobe where the slipper lay and lifted it out when her door swung open.

Larry hung onto the doorknob like a limp suit of clothes, obviously three sheets to the wind. "G'd'evenin'," he slurred, but whatever he had been going to say next died on his lips, as his widening eyes killed Sybil's desperate hope that he was too drunk to notice what she held in her hands. There'd been no time to put it back in the drawer, or even hide it behind her back.

When Sybil thought back on the next few minutes, it seemed to her that her mind had gone completely blank and her body had taken over. Time seemed to speed up and slow down all at once: there was not a second to hesitate, and yet she had no trouble seeing every angle of every possible next move. Her hand shot out of its own accord, whipping her mother's ruined gown off the hanger. With that in one hand and the slipper clutched in the other, she lowered her head and rushed at the door.

Larry made some surprised sound. Instead of bulling into him she edged through the narrow space between him and the doorjamb. Her movement put off his balance enough that he stumbled to one side, further into the room, as she pelted down the corridor. "Get back here!" he snarled from ten feet behind, but there was little power behind it, and she could feel that she was outstripping him. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs she could hardly even hear his voice.

Still, there was no time to lose. Conscious thought was returning and with it, panic. As she ran through the kitchens her harsh breath bounced off the walls and rasped in her ears. A moment later she was free, sprinting across the moonlit lawn before she could think about how exposed it was. When she reached the tree line she stopped and turned back to look at the house. As she watched, a light came on in her stepmother's bedroom window. So much for the element of surprise.

She wound the slipper up in the silk and paused long enough to get her bearings. Then she plunged into the forest, toward the road. And beyond it, to a path she had been down once before.


	10. Midnight + 02:21:43

_Stroke of Midnight Plus Two Days, Twenty-One Hours, and Forty-Three Minutes_

Sybil saw terror flicker in Tom's eyes. His hands twitched, as though the slipper in them was too hot to hold, and for a fraction of a second she thought he was about to push it back into her hands and shut the door in her face. If he did that, she would die.

But he didn't. Looking around as though the forest was full of spies, he cloaked the slipper's incriminating gleam in the gown Sybil had used as a wrapper and took her by the shoulder, pulled her into the cottage, and slammed the door shut behind her.

He bolted it and turned around, but didn't speak for several moments; he looked completely overwhelmed, his color high, his irises no more than thin edges of blue around the bottomless black of his pupils. Finally he blinked, something clicking into place in his expression, and he was in control of himself again. "Why don't you sit down," he said. There was nowhere but the pallet of pine boughs topped with a straw tick in the corner. Sybil perched on it gingerly while Tom fingered the silk in his hands; he looked as though he'd like to put the bundle down, but didn't know where to set it.

"Here." Sybil held out her hands, and he gave it to her. He ran his fingers through his hair again—it was standing on end by now—and began to pace around the small room, checking the latches on the shutters, picking up the tin cup on the table and setting it down again.

Finally he looked at her. "The prince has run mad, you know. I heard he won't eat, won't leave his room. They're taking women to the palace, God knows what they're doing with them there."

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen." Sybil made a helpless gesture. "I only wanted to go to the ball."

She couldn't help following him with her eyes, back and forth across the cottage. His restlessness was making her nervous.

"How in God's name did you..." he whipped around, suddenly looking almost terrified again. "Sybil...you haven't made some sort of deal, have you?"

"Deal? No."

"It's just…" he nodded at her lap. "That shoe's got the stink of magic all over it. And the fair folk, they're cunning."

"I'll tell you all of it," Sybil said. "But please, sit down." He did, collapsing onto the bed close enough that it would have raised a blush to her face under different circumstances. "I can't promise you'll believe everything I tell you...I'm not sure I believe it myself, and I was there." But he seemed calmer. She took comfort in the knowledge that even if he didn't believe her, he would still help her.

She told him the story. The miraculous making over of her mother's gown and its destruction at the hands of her stepmother. Her fairy godmother appearing in a beam of light; the animals changing, the pumpkin swelling and sprouting wheels. Her own transformation, and the warning that she must leave the ball before the stroke of midnight, when everything would be as it was.

"Typical," Tom muttered. "Setting conditions. They like to lord their power over you, the fairies do."

The ball itself she skimmed over; the main point was that everyone there had seemed to be under some kind of enchantment. "Maybe with the prince, it stuck," she mused.

"So obviously you left before midnight, or they'd know who you were. Then what happened?"

"Well...I didn't exactly leave _before_ midnight. More like...as the clock began to strike."

Tom cocked his head, the light of amusement coming into his eyes. "Cutting it a bit fine, weren't you?"

Sybil shook her head slowly. "I don't know what I was thinking."

"I suppose you were enjoying yourself." His voice was soft. His eyes dropped to his hands, which lay palms down in his lap.

Sybil wanted to reach out and take one of them. "I was. I did. But I never thought…" she stopped, her thoughts too tangled up to express clearly.

"You never thought the prince would fall in love with a beautiful, nameless woman who showed up unannounced at his cattle call?" Tom gave a chuckle. He'd called her beautiful. "My God, Sybil, he's probably had inbred princesses thrown at him since he was in napkins. And a mystery's like a worm to a fish with that sort. Of course he couldn't let it go."

"But…" she worried the silk between her fingers and thumb, feeling the hardness of glass beneath. It felt cold even through the fabric. "I don't want to marry him," she whispered. "What am I going to do?"

"So he has the other shoe," mused Tom, skirting the subject. "Strange that they stayed, when everything else went back to how it was."

"I lost it, running away from the palace. It was like I was waking from a dream—everything started changing back as soon as the clock began to strike twelve, and I had to get away. I didn't know what else to do..."

"You did right." He reached over and covered both her hands with one of his, giving them a little squeeze before taking the bundle from her. He unwrapped it to have another look at the slipper. "I've never seen anything like it." He glanced up at her. "You're right, we have to hide it. That proclamation's all over the kingdom; anyone would know what this is straight away."

 _We_. The knot in her stomach loosened a little. "What if we buried it," she said. "Deep in the forest? You must know the places no one goes."

"There are still a few. Though with magic involved…" His brow furrowed. "These kinds of things tend to want to be found." He was silent for a long time, turning something over in his mind. "They haven't come to your stepmother's yet? The king's men?"

"No." Her heart accelerated at the mention of her stepmother. "But Tom, Larry knows. He saw me with the slipper earlier...I'm sure he told his mother."

Tom's head jerked up. "That settles it, then. You'll have to stay here."

Her heart seemed to squeeze, then expand to twice its normal size. "Here?" It came out as a squeak.

He misunderstood her. "I'll sleep on the floor. And it's just for a while, until the prince has found someone else who fits that damned shoe. He will, you know, sooner or later. And whoever it is she'll probably be glad to pretend to be his mystery woman." He gave her a wry look. "Not everyone's so exacting as you about who they marry."

Sybil considered this. "No," she said, shaking her head. "Larry saw me leave with nothing. They'd know I would have to go to ground somewhere nearby, and I'm sure Lady Merton's noticed that you and I are..." More than woodcutter and kitchen maid. "...friendly. You'll be first on her list when they go out looking for me. We'll hide the slipper tonight, but then I have to go back." She smiled ruefully. "Oddly enough, I think they might protect me. They won't want to lose their only servant, and a free one at that."

He was silent. At first it just seemed like he was forming his rebuttal; but he'd gone uncharacteristically still, his face forward, not even a blink. An invisible tension spun out between them like a spider's web. Sybil studied her hands, watching from the corner of her eye for Tom to move.

"Sybil," he said finally, "Why don't you want to marry the prince?"

"Do you really have to ask. I don't love him."

"But…" he was quiet for a long time, choosing his words. They hardly ever had to dance around things like they were doing now, but maybe that was because they'd always given such a wide berth to the things that needed to be danced around. "You couldn't ask for a better ticket out, you know."

As if she hadn't thought about it. She could escape it all forever: the drudgery, her stepmother's harsh words, Larry's eyes and hands and maybe worse. All she'd have to do would be to wash her face and take that slipper and march up the curved flagstone drive to the palace.

Out of the pan, into the fire.

She sighed. "The prince," she said, "is a terrific bore. Most people don't know that. And the ones that do won't say it to anyone else." Not if they wanted to keep their heads.

Tom's brow smoothed and his mouth formed a half-curve that made Sybil's stomach swoop. "Most people would put up with a good deal of boredom to live that kind of life."

"Well, I wouldn't."

Now the other side of his mouth came up. "Spoken like a girl with a fairy godmother."

Sybil chuckled bleakly. "Where's she got to now that I really need her, then?"

"Probably off killing sheep and spoiling people's milk. But don't worry, we'll deal with this. The shoe first, and then the rest of it. I'll think of something."

It was a great comfort, just having someone to tell the story to, even apart from Tom helping her. For the first time Sybil believed that she might escape the snare after all. But it didn't make her feel as relieved as she'd thought she would. She'd given Tom a simple explanation for not marrying the prince that just happened to be a lie.

Or it might as well have been. She didn't love the prince, that was true enough. But that wasn't the real reason she was going to such lengths to avoid being made one with a man who was good looking, seemed nice enough, and was ready and able to give her a life most people could only dream about.

She was tired of dancing.

"Tom…" Her hand shot out and took his. He went still again for just a second, then his gaze came up to hers, riveted to it. "When I said I didn't love the prince, what I meant was that he isn't the one who I..." His eyes seemed to grow bigger, the more she talked. She had to look away. She tried another tack: "I don't know what I'd have done if I didn't have you. Even before tonight—"

The words died in her throat. He was bringing her hand up to his lips, he was turning it over, his mouth was soft and shockingly warm on the intimate center of her palm. This was not the dry decorous brush of some visiting lord's lips on the back of her mother's hand, remembered from childhood. Warmth bloomed somewhere below her chest and spread through her body. An "Oh…" floated from her parted lips, barely more than a breath. Tom's eyes had fallen nearly closed but now they opened; somewhere underneath the rush of blood in her ears Sybil noted the surprise that rose in them. He seemed hardly able to believe what he was doing. But there was heat there as well, and it made her heart quicken.

Almost cautiously, he kissed her hand again. She curled her fingers to stroke his cheek and his eyes pulsed deep blue at her; she could feel his breath, warm and quick on her palm. His gaze strayed to her mouth. She barely had time to think, He is going to kiss me, and then he was doing it.

_O tell my love—_

She thought of his voice, ringing through the trees. When they'd met she'd found his accent droll; no one she knew spoke like that. But almost immediately she'd decided she liked it. She liked him, and it was part of him. Now she heard a hum deep in his throat, a sound of desire both aroused and fulfilled. It was at once comforting and unsettling. Even more so because, she realized, she was making the same sound herself.

_To come to me—_

Crystal droplets of water, shaking off his hair in the morning sunlight, beading on his bare skin. He was fully dressed now, but she could feel his heat through his shirt, the solidity of his arms and back, the softness of his lips alive against hers. She pressed into him and was shocked at the strength of her wanting, so strong it made her feel weak.

_To come to me in the forest._

She needed to breathe. The air felt cold in her throat after the warmth of his breath, and it sobered her enough to make her pull away. "I kissed him," she heard herself say. "The prince. Or I let him kiss me...I'm not sure which." She searched Tom's face for some acknowledgement of the wrong she'd done him, and found none. The dreamy look in his eyes might have dissipated a little. But it was confusion, not indignation, that took its place. "Nothing like that ever happened to me before," she went on, growing more and more agitated. "I'd never had a night like that, and I got swept up in it." The falling tone of her voice should have conveyed her remorse. But Tom still looked nonplussed, so she said it outright. "I'm sorry." More words wanted to rush out, to submerge them both in just how sorry she was that Tom's kiss had not been her first, but she had to stop to rest a hand on her galloping heart.

The very last thing she was expecting was for his face to split into a broad smile. "What on earth have you got to be sorry for?" He laughed: a happy laugh, full-throated and without a whit of grievance. "You said it yourself, you don't love him."

"No, but…" She would have thought that would make it worse, kissing a man she didn't even feel anything for. But Tom's hands were cupping her face, his fingertips at the nape of her neck and his thumbs moving gently over her cheekbones, and suddenly it didn't seem so important.

"Unless…" A shadow came over his face, something that looked very much like fear. "Sybil, do you love me?"

"Yes!" It came from her like it had been dashed out with cold water, but he still looked grave. " _Yes,_ I do." And just in case it wasn't perfectly clear: "I love you."

The smile began in his eyes and spread over his whole face. It made him look different to how Sybil had ever seen him before; she'd always thought of him as handsome enough, but now he was so beautiful it pierced her to look at him. "Good. Good." He kissed her again and she thought she might burst. "I love you," he whispered, next to her ear. "I've loved you for years."

"But you never said." Even as the words came she knew how silly they were. She'd never given him a reason to think he was anything more than a friend to her, never even fully let him into her problems. But of course she'd felt the same way.

"I'm saying it now. I love you...I love you...I love you." And with each "I love you" a kiss pressed to her ear, her cheek, the corner of her mouth.

She laughed, her feelings too big to keep them inside. "I love you too." She felt light and happy, despite everything: the prince and now her stepmother searching for her, the slipper that had been pushed to one side as she and Tom eased further and further into a reclining position—

The slipper! Sybil sat bolt upright, scrabbling for it. Tom grew solemn as he followed her line of thinking; he stood, the spell broken. "I know just where to put it," he said. "No one'll ever find it, unless they cut down the whole forest. Maybe not even then."

Sybil nodded, wrapped it more securely in her mother's dress, and stood up as well. "Then let's go."


	11. Midnight + 03:04:38

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for threats of sexual assault. And also rodents.

_Stroke of Midnight Plus Three Days, Four Hours, and Thirty-Eight Minutes_

Just as the eastern rim of the sky was starting to turn a delicate blue, Sybil slipped into the house through the kitchen door.

Tom hadn't wanted her to go back. That was putting it mildly: he'd begged her not to, said everything he could think of to get her not to. "We'll find a priest and be married first thing in the morning, if that's what it is." He'd been holding onto her hand tightly. "Or a vicar, or whatever you want. It's going to happen anyway, might as well be straight away."

Sybil had smiled at his romanticism, and at the notion that propriety could so influence her decisions. "Nothing you say is going to persuade me to put you in more danger. You've already signed your own death warrant, if the prince were to find out what you've done."

"I'd do it again, a hundred times. And if they arrest me, I'll march to the scaffold shouting that I'm not sorry!"

"I won't let it come to that." The fire in his eyes had made her wish she could stay. Though her education in matters of love had been well nigh non-existent, she did know she had much less to fear in Tom's bed than out of it. But that would have to wait until everything else was settled. She'd kissed him lingeringly—despite the confidence that fortified her voice, she couldn't help the sneaking feeling that it might be the last time—and taken a different way back to the one she'd come by, a meandering path Tom had told her about. She might need the more direct route in the near future, and she didn't want anyone seeing her use it.

They'd decided that Tom would keep up with his deliveries, to allay any suspicions that might point in his direction. The worry in his eyes as she left had spoken his true primary purpose in planning to come to the house as usual on Wednesday: to make sure she was all right. She had no idea what to expect from her stepmother. It was only reasonable to assume that her movements would be monitored more closely than before; she might even be locked up. But did Lady Merton know about the glass slipper's mate? She'd probably be quite interested in its whereabouts if she did.

The house seemed to be asleep, which was a surprise; she would have expected her stepmother to revel in the opportunity to get the drop on her. But then Lady Merton was not accustomed to long nights, apart from those spent inside society ballrooms. Sybil took off her shoes in the kitchen and crept up to the attic, growing more nervous with each landing she reached unmolested. She edged down the corridor to her room, slowing when she saw that the door still hung slightly ajar.

She stopped just outside it. For a minute or more she strained to hear anything from within. Surely if someone were inside they must sense her here; her heart beat loudly enough to be heard all over the house, it seemed like. Finally she took a breath and pushed the door all the way open.

The room had been ransacked. Drawers dumped out, curtains pulled down, the washstand overturned. Her mattress leant against the wall, spilling straw through a jagged diagonal slit in the ticking. She didn't have much, but everything she owned seemed to have been strewn over the floor. Worse than that: deliberately destroyed.

Her eye moved downward. There was a doll that always sat on her bed: Camilla, whom she'd lovingly mistreated for years in childhood and was the only souvenir she'd been allowed to keep from happier times. Camilla lay on the floor by the bedside table, her porcelain head dashed to bits. It looked like someone had stamped on her.

Sybil crossed the room to pick the doll up, smoothing down its red taffeta skirt. There was a thick feeling in her throat. She should never have come back.

"Well, well, well. The prodigal daughter returns."

Sybil whipped around. Her stepmother stood in the doorway with a smirk upon her face, clearly getting ready to enjoy herself. But this time Sybil didn't shrink, didn't bother to hide her anger. She was done trying to keep the peace.

"I'm not your daughter." She took a couple of steps toward Lady Merton, holding the doll aloft like a club. "You didn't have to do this."

Lady Merton looked around the room with an amused air. "I should think it hardly looks any different than before. This, however, is not my handiwork. Larry was a bit...overwrought after you left." Her gaze sharpened. "And I did need to make sure you weren't stealing from me. Which you were, so it was a good thing I did."

Her mother's jewels. "That wasn't stealing."

"Sybil, dear, those jewels belonged to your father. And everything that belonged to your father, now belongs to me." She smiled thinly. "But let's let bygones be bygones. Shall we? Your future is a much more interesting topic of conversation." She came further into the room, closing the door and seating herself on the only chair. She gestured to the bare bedstead. "Do sit down." Sybil remained on her feet, regarding her stepmother with a stony look that seemed to bounce right off her. "All right, dear, suit yourself." Lady Merton was being awfully sunny, awfully free with her false endearments. "So it appears we have quite the opportunity before us."

Confusion made a crack in Sybil's brittle outrage. "Opportunity?"

"Why, yes. The prince is pining away for you, my dear. _Pining._ You could ask for anything and he'd grant it. And just think, one day—let's hope sooner rather than later—you shall be queen! If only your father could have lived to see this day." Lady Merton stretched her lips into a rather grotesque imitation of a confidential smile. "However did you manage it? When we left you, you were in tears over that poor excuse for a gown." She gave a gleeful little wriggle.

"I had help," Sybil murmured, her thoughts whirling.

"Powerful friends! I never would have thought it. Had you been seeing the prince even before? Was that your plan, to make it public at the ball? You sneaky minx." Lady Merton clasped her hands together. "It was a pretty spectacle, I'll grant you that. People will be talking of it for years."

Sybil felt dizzy. She dropped down onto the bedstead; her stepmother's clammy hand grasped hers, and she stared at it like it was an insect. "You...you _want_ me to marry the prince?" She'd expected scorn, disbelief, scheming. She'd expected Lady Merton, like any bully, to do whatever it took to keep Sybil from rising to a more powerful position than hers.

"Well, not without some negotiation, of course. These things are always three-fourths horse trading anyway, especially the higher up you go. But the prince's..." she eyed Sybil with undisguised skepticism. "...infatuation with you gives us a better position to bargain from. I should think he'd hand over quite a hefty sum to get you." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "You _are_ a virgin?" Sybil nodded numbly, too bewildered to be indignant. "Excellent. I shall write to the palace this very day—"

"No!" It came out before she could stop it.

Lady Merton looked like Sybil had spit in her face. "What?"

Sybil floundered. "I mean...if they know I'm the one they're looking for...what's to stop them from just coming here straight away and forcing me to go with them? Then we'll get nothing." _You'll get nothing_ , she'd almost said.

Her stepmother regarded her with a hint of suspicion. She was not a stupid woman; she could tell that Sybil had an agenda of her own, though fortunately she seemed to have no idea of what it was. Sybil plunged ahead, hoping to distract her from any doubt. "That's why I came back. I…" She swallowed, fortifying herself for the big lie and the bigger one to follow. "I love the prince with all my heart, but I must think of my family. You...you are my family now."

Lady Merton broke into the complacent smile of someone who thought she'd got one over on her opponent. "Well, of course we are!" she cried, even as the words _Stupid girl_ seemed to scroll across her face. She patted Sybil's hand. "And you must dine with us this very evening. We can wait on ourselves for one night."

"Oh, I couldn't." Sybil dropped her eyes, let a demure flush come to her cheeks. "I wouldn't feel right about it."

"But you mustn't feel that way. You're a bit rough around the edges, it's true, but your blood is every bit as noble as ours. And you'll need the practice with your table manners, won't you?"

At present Sybil's noble blood was boiling in her veins. "Let me serve you," she said, managing not to grit her teeth. "One last time."

-o-

Dinner had been excruciating, even if Sybil had been spared actually sitting at the table. Her stepmother was so jubilant she didn't even notice the lowering clouds on the faces of both her sons, but particularly Larry's. Obviously, they did not share her glee at being related by marriage to the future queen.

"We'll talk strategy in the morning, dear," Lady Merton had said when the meal was over, and sent her to the scullery without a qualm. Sybil wasn't sorry. It was peaceful below stairs; she could be alone with her thoughts, and that was what she needed: time to plan. Things would have to move forward more quickly than she had thought.

"So where'd you put it?"

The voice made her jump and whirl around, abruptly aware of being bent over the sink in a posture no doubt provocative to someone of a certain turn of mind. Larry was draped in the doorway, blocking her path out. The scullery suddenly seemed even smaller than it was.

She wiped her hands on her apron. "Where'd I put what?"

"Don't play innocent with me." He descended the single step down onto the sloping floor. He was an odd sight in this grease-spattered little hole of a room, in his crisp white shirt and tails. And yet Sybil could see the rot within him, more foul than anything that lurked in the drains. "Couldn't find your way back to the palace, could you? So you thought you'd just come back and sponge off us some more, wait for your prince to come to you."

She dropped her eyes as if abashed. If that was what he wanted to think, then let him.

"I know what your game is," he went on. "I didn't know you at the ball, but I should have. The way you were rubbing up against him the whole night, with that wide-eyed look like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. You've done it to me a hundred times. Little tease." Sybil's mouth fell open. "But you wouldn't dare tease His Highness the prince, would you. Where'd the two of you go off to, eh? What were you doing?"

Strolling the palace grounds in heavily romantic moonlight, mostly. Except for the kiss next to the reflecting pool, nothing had happened that would have been out of place in a storybook for children. But Sybil flushed anyway. Larry's face twisted in a satisfied way; he took her color for shame, when she was actually angry enough to take the heavy skillet she'd been cleaning and lay it across the side of his face.

Emboldened, he stepped nearer. "Don't think you're going anywhere, you little whore. Mother's got big plans for you, but I like you right where you are. One of these nights I'm going to show you how much."

Sybil's fingers twitched; out of the tail of her eye she made sure of the location of the skillet handle. If he took one more step…

"The prince won't marry you, once he finds out who you are. I'd bet my right eye on it. No one will ever marry you." Larry laughed humorlessly. "Your precious Papa's dead, your whole family's dead. You're nothing. Nothing but our maid, and gentlemen can do whatever they like with those."

He wouldn't, not right now. He'd know he was in for a fight, and he wouldn't want to spoil his clothes. But Sybil could hardly breathe. "You're my brother," she said, as the thing most likely to cool him off.

"Not by blood."

"But you could have been." Her anger, her fear, were draining away, and now she just felt a deep sadness. "You could have been a brother to me. You could have been kind."

Was that guilt she saw ripple across his face? Whatever it was, it only took an instant to pass, leaving her looking at the usual prideful mask. "Sweet, stupid Sybil," he said. "When will you learn that there's no profit in kindness? Now...where is that slipper?"

She lifted her chin. "Nowhere you'll ever find it."

He shrugged. "So that's how it's to be, then, is it? No matter." The attempt at nonchalance did not quite convince. She'd succeeded in deflating his ardor, though, and all that was left was for him to try and have the last word. Which he did, or so he thought: "But know this: you'll marry the prince over my dead body."

Once he'd gone, Sybil let out a little laugh. "That might almost be worth it."

-o-

" _Open!_ "

The front-door bell nearly jumped off the wall of the servants' hall, where Sybil had been sitting and trying unsuccessfully to read, but she didn't need it to know someone was at the door. She could hear the pounding through the very bones of the house.

" _Open! Open in the name of the king!_ "

Her heartbeat took off like a brace of pheasant flushed from the moor-grass. Dread pulsed in her stomach, her temples, it tingled in her fingertips and made her hands shake until she had to put down her book. Other than that she remained still, listening and considering her options.

She could run out the kitchen door. But she didn't know how many of them there were, or whether they'd be guarding the exits. She had nowhere to go except for Tom's cottage, and she would not risk leading them there.

She could wrap cloths around her foot under her stocking, so the slipper wouldn't fit. The king's men would go on to the next house, shrugging their shoulders. Another unsuccessful visit, but it was only a kitchen maid anyway, eh? Lady Merton could be dealt with later. But what if they made her try it on barefoot?

She could go up and answer the door, try on the slipper, be carried off to the palace. Marry the prince.

"Godmother," she murmured. "If you're listening, I could use a little help."

The pounding stopped, the bell stilled. The front door opened with a creak that Sybil could feel in her bones.

-o-

" _Sybil!_ " Her stepmother's voice echoed down the stairwell with a hysterical note in it that was more than the three glasses of wine she'd drunk at dinner. "Sybil, there you are. Goodness, you're slow." She stood at the open baize door still dressed for dinner, a scowl on her face. So they were back to mistress and servant, then. "These men—" she gestured to the pair of dour faces ranked in the front hall—"Wish to speak with you."

Sybil smiled and bobbed a curtsy. She wasn't in a state to notice details, but she focused on the bulbous nose and reddened eyes of the shorter and rounder of them, who looked like an aging roustabout dressed up in epaulettes and gold buttons. "Gentlemen, you must be tired at this late hour. May I offer you some tea?" She allowed her gaze to flick to the door, but she could not discern whether there might be more men outside.

"No," said the taller, thinner one, his mouth opening just enough to let the word escape before snapping shut like a trout's. _He_ looked like a clerk. "Thank you. Our business will not take long, Miss…?"

"Crawley," she supplied. "Sybil Crawley."

"Mm, quite." He barely seemed to have heard her. "No doubt you've seen the proclamation. We're under orders to try every maid in the kingdom." He gestured to the short envoy, who came forward, undoing the drawstrings of a small sack made of black velvet. "Now, if you could just sit down and remove your right shoe and stocking, we'll try this on you and be out of your way in a trice."

Her heart seemed to be trying to beat its way up her throat and out of her mouth. "Of course." She turned and started toward the far end of the room, walking slowly. "Are you sure you don't want tea?"

The door to the billiards room opened as they passed. "Mother?" asked Tim. "What's going on?"

"They're still looking for that girl from the ball," Lady Merton said, looking glum. "Gentlemen...may I ask what happens if the girl's foot fits the slipper? She is our only servant, and we're quite unable to do without her. Certainly there will be some kind of compensation offered, if His Highness is truly so attached?" The only response the envoys gave this was a pair of disgruntled looks.

"Mother, honestly! Surely they can't think it was _Sybil!_ " Larry's voice was too loud. He pushed past his brother and out into the hall, glass still in hand. "Can you imagine her, dancing all night with the prince with her feet stained black from cinders!" He laughed strenuously.

The tall envoy pursed his lips, managing to convey the impression that he was rolling his eyes without actually rolling them. This was, apparently, not the first time he'd heard words to this effect. "Sir, we are under orders from the king to—"

"Oh, go on then, go on." Larry gestured with his brandy. "Though I don't know why you're bothering." He turned away, disgusted.

Sybil sat on the sofa and slowly removed her shoe and stocking. She was waiting for something to happen, to save her. But soon her foot was bare (quite pink, contrary to what Larry had said, and very nearly clean) and there was no firefly glow, no black-garbed woman, no influx of helpful bluebirds. There was no getting out of this.

The short envoy drew the slipper from its sack. The facets cut into it sparkled; it almost seemed to give off a glow. In spite of herself Sybil felt a pull toward it. "Oh," she breathed.

"Yes, it's quite lovely, isn't it?" A real, fond smile came to the man's face. "Amazing workmanship. Though I can't think it would be very comfortable for dancing, can you? Now then, we'll just…" He began to lumber to one knee before her, the slipper balanced on the pads of his fingers.

There was a swift movement from the corner of Sybil's eye, a dark something striking in front of her like a snake, and the envoy stared in horror at his empty hands. He actually let out a little yelp.

"It would be a travesty!" Five heads swiveled toward the fireplace, where Larry trembled on the stone hearth. The glass slipper was in his hand. "You might allow this to happen, Mother, but I won't!"

Lady Merton stepped forward, slowly, her hand held out. "Larry, darling, let's not do anything we can't—"

"It _will not happen!_ " He half turned and drew back his arm. The envoys and Lady Merton leapt forward, the men shouting, a thin scream on Lady Merton's lips. But it was too late. Larry dashed the slipper into the fireplace, where it shattered with a crash far less impressive than the towering silence that followed.

Everyone seemed frozen in place. Larry, his mouth twisted into a half triumphant, half defiant sneer. Lady Merton, still reaching toward her son, eyes wide and beseeching. The king's envoys, who looked as though they were thinking this must surely be a nightmare from which they would soon wake up. Sybil, for her part, felt rooted to the sofa.

Tim, hanging in the billiard room doorway, was first to move. He strode toward his mother and Larry, picking up speed with every step. "Traitor!" He shouted at his brother, his voice breaking with panicky fervor. "You traitor!"

His mother's mouth rounded in almost comical surprise. "Tim!" She gasped.

"You know it's true, Mother!" Tim's eyes were rolling like a spooked mare's. He turned toward the king's men. "He acted completely alone! We had nothing to do with—"

" _Guaaaaaaards!_ " the short one bawled.

The front door burst open and two very large men who looked like they'd actually earned their military uniforms goose-stepped into the hall. "Arrest this man!" The envoy's face was purple. He pointed a plump, accusatory finger at Larry. "Arrest him on charge of destruction of property of the crown! He has committed assault! He has committed larceny! He has…" He produced a handkerchief from somewhere and mopped his brow. "He has ruined our chances!"

The guardsmen asked no questions but stepped forward, stone-faced. Each took possession of one of Larry's arms, and they began to hustle him toward the exit.

Lady Merton's paralysis broke. She stumbled after them, crying "No, wait! Wait! We have the girl right here!"

The clerkish envoy gave her a withering look. "Indeed, madam. Are we to believe His Highness has fallen in love with your kitchen maid?"

"But she isn't! She's my late husband's daughter, Lady Sybil. The Earl of Grantham's youngest! The line died out with him...but she was at the ball, she danced with the prince! Sybil, dear, tell them."

"Yes, tell them, Sybil." Larry's eyes were wide, and his death was in them. "Please. Tell them about the other—"

The other slipper. A word from her could save Larry's life, the Greys' reputation, her father's house. It would also separate her forever from the one she loved, and imprison her in a life she would hate to the end of her days. It wasn't fair, she thought. To be asked to give up her happiness for people who had tried as hard as they could to destroy it. But if she didn't speak, would she ever be able to enjoy the freedom her silence had bought?

She feared not.

The king's men had resumed their march toward the door. Sybil stood up and drew in a breath, closing her eyes. Tom would understand, she thought. She hoped.

"Wait."

But a scream drowned out her voice: a man's scream, though it was as high-pitched as any girl's. Amazingly, it had come from one of the burly guardsmen. He let go of Larry's arm and began dancing about like he had spiders in his drawers.

"Good heavens, man, what's the matter with you?" demanded the clerkish envoy. But now the other guard had started up. He wasn't as beside himself as the first, but he was bothered enough to release Larry and start slapping at first one leg of his trousers, then the other.

"Something's crawled up me leg, Sir!" he yelled. "More than one of 'em, I think! Sir!"

"Don't be absurd, corporal! Your prisoner's escaping!" Indeed, Larry had wasted no time in sprinting for the door. But the envoy was soon distracted. "Oh! Ugh! Little _bugger_ —"

Sybil looked around. Mice were shooting from the walls and across the floor in dark streaks. Dozens of them, more than she'd ever seen at one time in the kitchens. "What in God's name is going on?" Lady Merton wavered, backing toward the staircase. Her heel came down on a pliant little body and she shrieked. The squeamish guardsman's small tormentor darted out of his trouser leg, and Sybil saw that it had a notched ear and a loping stride, as though it had been injured at one time.

The mice seemed to be rushing the king's men; they left the family mostly alone, for the moment at least. "Madam!" cried the envoy in shuddering despair. "Your house is quite infested!" Lady Merton didn't answer. She was huddled on the first stair landing, having collapsed there in fright. Tim looked about and beat a hasty retreat into the billiard room.

Mice boiled from the baseboards, hundreds of them, thousands, enough to make even Sybil shudder. The floor was black with them; she couldn't take a step for fear of crushing one. She stood as motionless as she could, concentrating on breathing in and out. If this was her fairy godmother's doing, she thought, she'd be quite happy never to have her help again.

" _Retreat!_ " bellowed the fat envoy. "We'll be eaten alive! We'll send someone to deal with them later!" Moments later the clatter of horses' hooves receded down the drive.

Sybil waited with her eyes closed while the _scritch-scritch_ of tiny paws on floorboards and the chitter of rodentine voices went from almost deafening, to a susurration, to isolated scrapes and squeaks. She opened them to find four mice in a row before her. If dumb creatures could look something between smug and shamefaced, they did.

"That wasn't very nice," she told them sternly, and almost immediately dissolved in laughter. "Go on, now," she said when she'd recovered enough to speak. "You can have the run of the pantry, all of you. I doubt we'll be needing what's in there." They remained a moment longer, heads cocked as if they truly understood her, and then they were gone.

Sybil walked slowly toward the door to the billiard room and knocked upon it. "Tim, open up. They're gone." The door opened a few inches and Tim's pointy, haggard face peeked out. "Your mother's not well," she said, jerking her head toward the whimpering coming from the stairs. "You need to take care of her."

"Hang all that!" Tim snapped. "I'll go off on my own."

"She's your mother," Sybil impressed, gently but firmly. "And besides, do you know where she keeps the valuables?" That gave him pause. "Then I suggest you make her a pot of very strong tea and get her calmed down so you can leave before the king's men decide to come back."

He blanched. "Where are you going?"

"Off on my own." She turned and walked through the hall and out the door without a backward glance.

The moon was waning, but it was still bright enough for her to make sure Larry wasn't lying in wait for her behind a shrub. She didn't really think he would be; last time she'd seen him, he'd looked spooked enough to run halfway across the kingdom without stopping.

She was not going so far. Just down the road, to a little spur of a path that few people noticed.

She was going home.


	12. Midnight + 10:10:21:12

_Stroke of Midnight Plus Ten Years, Ten Days, Twenty-One Hours, and Twelve Minutes_

Let us imagine an evening at the height of summer. The sun is setting, the air heavy and soft in those magical few minutes before the mosquitoes come out. In the forest the ruddy light filters sideways between the trunks of the trees; in the ravines it is nearly dark, the day's golden-green turned to blue-black with a suddenness that can be frightening to the uninitiated. But the children whose distant laughter we hear do not sound frightened.

They've grown up here. They've named every tree, catalogued every turn of the stream that runs through the wood and into the fields, meandering by their house on its way down from the secret places. Secret to everyone but them. Each rock is their friend, and though the forest does contain enemies, those are easy enough to avoid.

We need no path. Let us follow the laughter directly through the trees to where three small figures approach a clearing, their hands heavy with treasures: stones and pinecones, chestnuts and blackberries. In the clearing there is a cottage, snug though not exactly pretty, having had rooms added on at different times. But its windows glow with a welcoming light, and the smell of dinner wafting from them makes the children's stomachs rumble.

Let us approach a window softly, before the cottage's occupants shutter it for the night. A man and a woman speak companionably as they place the dishes on the table. They are generous with their smiles; their touches as well, whenever one passes close enough to the other. In their rather tight quarters, this happens frequently.

The woman raises her head at the sounds from outside; she smiles, says something. The man laughs a reply and pulls her close, playfully, and she resists, playfully. But by the time the door bangs open their embrace has become ardent enough to make the children sigh and roll their eyes.

Now let us fall back from the house and follow the creek that runs next to it: not downstream, toward what passes for civilization, but up, where it laughs through a ravine and between the shoulders of gentle hills, backward up small rapids, through a cut in the rock hewn by years of patient water, and into the narrow cave from which its headwaters spring. This is the deepest part of the wood, where even the children have not yet dared to explore. It is also a deep part of the stream, but the water is so clear that, in the daylight, one can see through fathoms as though they were inches.

Hours have passed, the moon has risen, though its glow barely makes it through the crowns of the trees. What little light there is finds a gleam of faceted glass, almost hidden beneath the shifting sands of the streambed. It winks and glitters, many-colored, tempting. But here there is no one to tempt.

Miles away, the children dream in one room and their parents love in another. Here, in the dark, the glass slipper sleeps alone.


End file.
